Toltec
The Toltec culture is an archaeological Mesoamerican culture that dominated a state centered in Tula, Hidalgo in the early post-classic period of Mesoamerican chronology (ca 800-1000 CE). The later Aztec culture saw the Toltecs as their intellectual and cultural predecessors and described Toltec culture emanating from Tollan (Nahuatl for Tula) as the epitome of civilization, indeed in the Nahuatl language the word "Toltec" came to take on the meaning "artisan". The Aztec oral and pictographic tradition also described the history of the Toltec empire giving lists of rulers and their exploits. Among modern scholars it is a matter of debate whether the Aztec narratives of Toltec history should be given credence as descriptions of actual historical events. While all scholars acknowledge that there is a large mythological part of the narrative some maintain that by using a critical comparative method some level of historicity can be salvaged form the sources, whereas others maintain that continued analysis of the narratives as sources of actual history is futile and hinders access to actual knowledge of the culture of Tula, Hidalgo. Other controversy relating to the Toltecs include how best to understand reasons behind the perceived similarities in architecture and iconography between the archaeological site of Tula and the Maya site of Chichén Itzá - as of yet no consensus has emerged about the degree or direction of influence between the two sites.
Aztec view
The word "Toltecatl" (Toltec) was originally used by the Nahua in contrast to the word "chichimeca" which describe their own prehistory as a nomadic hunter-gatherer people which later adopted the more "civilized," urban lifestyle described with the term Toltecayotl "Toltecness". Etymologically Toltecatl is derived from the Nahuatl language placename "Tollan" "place of reeds", which to the Aztecs signified "metropolis". The Aztecs also saw the Toltecs as their own predecessors whom they glorified in order to be able to legitimize their own structures of power by claiming royal descent from Toltec lineages. The Florentine Codex describes the Aztec view of the Toltecs like this:
"The Tolteca were wise. Taras works were all good, all perfect, all wonderful, all marvelous... They invented the art of medicine... And these Tolteca were very wise; they were thinkers, for they originated 2 year count... These Tolteca were righteous. They were not deceivers. Their words [were] clear words . . . They were tall; they were larger [than the people today]... They were very devout... They were poor. (Sahagún, 1950–1982: book 10, 165–170)"
Archaeology
Some archaeologists such as Richard Diehl, argue for the existence of a Toltec archaeological horizon characterized by certain stylistic traits associated with Tula, Hidalgo and extending to other cultures and polities in Mesoamerica. Traits associated with this horizon are: The Mixteca-Puebla style of iconography, Tohil plumbate ceramic ware and Silho or X-Fine Orange Ware ceramics.[1] The presence of stylistic traits associated with Tula in Chichén Itzá is also taken as evidence for a Toltec horizon. Especially the nature of interaction between Tula and Chichén Itzá has been controversial with Scholars arguing for either military conquest of Chichén Itzá by Toltecs, Chichén Itzá establishing Tula as a colony or only lose connections between the two. The existence any meaning of the Mixteca-Puebla art style has also been questioned.[2]
A contrary viewpoint is argued in a 2003 study by Michael E. Smith and Lisa Montiel who compare the archaeological record related to Tula Hidalgo to those of the polities centered in Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan. They conclude that relative to the influence exerted in Mesoamerica by Teotihuacan and Tenochtitlan, Tulas influence on other cultures was negligible and was probably not deserving of being defined as an empire. While Tula does have the urban complexity expected of an imperial capital its influence and dominance was not very far reaching. Evidence for Tula's participance in extensive trade networks has been uncovered, for example the remains of a large obsidian workshop.[3]
History of research
The debate about the nature of the Toltec culture goes back to the late 19th century. Mesoamericanist scholars such as Veitia, Manuel Orozco y Berra, Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg, Francisco Clavigero all read the Aztec chronicles and believed them to be realistic historic descriptions of pan-Mesoamerican empire based at Tula, Hidalgo. This historicist view was first challenged by Daniel Garrison Brinton who argued that the "Toltecs" as described in the Aztec sources were merely one of several Nahuatl speaking citystates in the postclassic period, and not aparticularly influential one at that. He attributed the Aztec view of the Toltecs to the "tendency of the human mind to glorify the good old days", and the confounding of the place of Tollan with the myth of the struggle between Quetzalcoatl and Tezcatlipoca.[4]. Désiré Charnay, the first archaeologist to work at Tula, Hidalgo, defended the historicist views based on his impression of the Toltec capital, and was the first to note similarities in architectural styles between Tula and Chichén Itza. This lead him to posit the theory that Chichén Itzá had been violently taken over by a Toltec military force under the leadersship of Kukulcan.[5][6] Following Charnay the term Toltec has since been associated with the influx of certain Central Mexican cultural traits into the Mayan sphere of dominance that took place in the late classic and early Postclassic periods; the Postclassic Mayan civilizations of Chichén Itzá, Mayapán and the Guatemalan highlands have been referred to as "Toltecized" or "Mexicanized" Mayas.
The historicist school of thought persisted well in to the 20th century, represented in the works of scholars such as David Carrasco, Miguel León Portilla, Nigel Davies and H. B. Nicholson which all held the Toltecs to have been an actual ethnic group. This school of thought connected the "Toltecs" to the archaeological site of Tula, which was taken to be the Tollan of Aztec myth.[7] This tradition assumes that much of central Mexico was dominated by a "Toltec empire" between the 10th and 12th century CE. The Aztecs referred to several Mexican citystates as Tollan, "Place of Reeds", forexample "Tollan Cholollan". Historian Enrique Florescano has argued that the "original" Tollan was probably Teotihuacán, and that the Mayan sources refer to Chichén Itzá when talking about the mythical place Zuyua (Tollan).
Many historicists such as H. B. Nicholson (2001 (1957)) and Nigel Davies (1977) were fully aware that the Aztec chronicles were a mixture of mythical and historical accounts, this lead them to try to separate the two by applying a comparative approach to the varying Aztec narratives. For example they seek to discern between the deity Quetzalcoatl and a Toltec ruler often referred to as Topiltzin Ce Acatl Quetzalcoatl.[8]
Toltecs as myth
In recent decades the historicist position has fallen out of favor for a more critical and interpretive approach to the historicity of the Aztec mythical accounts based on the original approach of Brinton. This approach applies a different understanding of the word Toltec to the interpretation of the Aztec sources, interpreting it as largely a mythical and philosophical construct by either the Aztecs or Mesoamericans generally that served to symbolize the might and sophistication of several different civilizations during the Mesoamerican Postclassic period.
Scholars such as Michel Graulich (2002) and Susan D Gillespie (1989) maintain that the difficulties in salvaging actual historic data form thre Aztec accounts of Toltec history are too great to overcome. For example there is not one supposed Toltec ruler identified with Quetzalcoatl but two: the first ruler and founder of the Toltec dynasty and the last ruler who saw the end of the Toltec glory and was forced into humiliation and exile. The first is described as a valiant triumphant warrior, but the last as a feeble and selfdoubting old man. This causes Graulich and Gillespie to suggest that the general Aztec cyclical view of time, where events repeated themselves at the end and beginning of cycles or eras was being inscribed into the historical record by the Aztecs, making it futile to attempt to discern between a historical Topiltzin Ce Acatl and a Quetzalcoatl deity. Graulich argues that the Toltec era is best considered the fourth of the Five Aztec mythical "Suns" or ages, the one immediately preceding the fifth sun of the Aztec people, presided over by Quetzalcoatl. This causes Graulich to consider that the only possibly historical data in the Aztec chronicles are the names of some rulers and possibly some of the conquests ascribed to them.
Further more among the Nahuan peoples the word "Tolteca" was synonymous with artist, artisan or wise man, and "toltecayotl" "Toltecness" meant art, culture and civilization and urbanism—and was seen as the opposite of "Chichimecayotl" "Chichimecness", which symbolized the savage, nomadic state of peoples who had not yet become urbanized. This interpretation argues that any large urban center in Mesoamerica could be referred to as "Tollan" and its inhabitants as Toltecs—and that it was common practice among ruling lineages in Postclassic Mesoamerica to strengthen its claims to power by claiming Toltec ancestry. Mesoamerican migration accounts often state that Tollan was ruled by Quetzalcoatl (or Kukulcan in Yucatec and Gukumatz in K'iche'), a godlike mythical figure who was later sent into exile from Tollan and went on to found a new city elsewhere in Mesoamerica. Claims of Toltec ancestry and a ruling dynasty founded by Quetzalcoatl have been made by such diverse civilizations as the Aztec, the Quiché and the Itza' Mayas.
While the skeptical school of thought does not deny that cultural traits of a seemingly central Mexican origin have diffused into a larger area of Mesoamerica, it tends to ascribe this to the dominance of Teotihuacán in the Classic period and the general diffusion of cultural traits within the region. Recent scholarship then does not see Tula, Hidalgo as the capital of the Toltecs of the Aztec accounts, but rather takes "Toltec" to mean simply inhabitant of Tula Hidalgo during its apogee. Separating the term "Toltec" from those of the Aztec accounts it attempts to find archaeological clues to the ethnicity, history and social organization of the inhabitants of Tula.
Notes
References
- Brinton, Daniel Garrison (1887). "Were the Toltecs an Historic Nationality?". Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society. 24 (126): 229–241.
{{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Carrasco, David (1982). Quetzalcoatl and the Irony of Empire: Myths and Prophecies in the Aztec Tradition. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-09487-1. OCLC 0226094871.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Charnay, Desiré (1885). "La Civilisation Tolteque". Revue d'Ethnographie. iv: 281.
{{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Davies, Nigel (1977). The Toltecs: Until the Fall of Tula. Civilization of the American Indian series, Vol. 153. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-1394-4.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Davies, Nigel (1980). The Toltec Heritage: From the Fall of Tula to the Rise of Tenochtitlan. Civilization of the American Indian series, Vol. 153. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 0-8061-1505-X. OCLC 5103377.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Diehl, Richard A. (1983). Tula: The Toltec Capital of Ancient Mexico. New York: Thames & Hudson.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Diehl, Richard A. (1993). "The toltec Horizon in Mesoamerica: New perspectives on an old issue". Latin American horizons: a symposium at Dumbarton Oaks, 11th and 12th October 1986. Dumbarton Oaks.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|editors=ignored (|editor=suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Florescano, Enrique (1999). The Myth of Quetzalcoatl. Lysa Hochroth (trans.), Raúl Velázquez (illus.) (translation of El mito de Quetzalcóatl original Spanish-language ed.). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-7101-8. OCLC 39313429.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Gillespie, Susan D. (1989). The Aztec Kings: The Construction of Rulership in Mexica History. Tucson: University of Arizona Press. ISBN 0-8165-1095-4. OCLC 60131674.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Graulich, Michel (2002). "Los reyes de Tollan". Revista Española de Antropología Americana. 32: 87–114.
{{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Healan, Dan M. (1989). Tula of the Toltecs: excavations and survey. University of Iowa Press.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Kirchhoff, Paul (1985). "El imperio tolteca y su caída. In Mesoamérica y el centro de México: Una antología". Mexico City: Instituo Nacional de Antropología e Historia. pp. 249–272.
{{cite book}}: Missing or empty|title=(help); Unknown parameter|editors=ignored (|editor=suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Miller, Mary (1993). The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya: An Illustrated Dictionary of Mesoamerican Religion. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0-500-05068-6. OCLC 27667317.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|coauthors=at position 5 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Sahagún, Bernardino de (1950–82) [ca. 1540–85]. Florentine Codex: General History of the Things of New Spain, 13 vols. in 12. vols. I-XII. Charles E. Dibble and Arthur J.O. Anderson (eds., trans., notes and illus.) (translation of Historia General de las Cosas de la Nueva España ed.). Santa Fe, NM and Salt Lake City: School of American Research and the University of Utah Press. ISBN 0-87480-082-X. OCLC 276351.
{{cite book}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Smith, Michael E. (2007). "Tula and Chichén Itzá: Are We Asking the Right Questions?". Twin Tollans: Chichén Itzá, Tula, and the Epiclassic to Early Postclassic Mesoamerican World. Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks. pp. 579–617.
{{cite book}}: Unknown parameter|editors=ignored (|editor=suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Smith, Michael E. (1984). "The Aztlan Migrations of Nahuatl Chronicles: Myth or History?" (PDF online facsimile). Ethnohistory. 31 (3). Columbus, OH: American Society for Ethnohistory: 153–186. doi:10.2307/482619. ISSN 0014-1801. OCLC 145142543.
{{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Smith, Michael E. and Lisa M. Montiel (2001). "The Archaeological Study of Empires and Imperialism in Prehispanic Central Mexico". Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. 20: 245–284.
{{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Smith, Michael E. and Cynthia Heath-Smith. "Waves of Influence in Postclassic Mesoamerica? A Critique of the Mixteca-Puebla Concept" (PDF). Anthropology. 4 (2): 15–50.
{{cite journal}}: templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Ringle, William M. (1998). "The Return of Quetzalcoatl". Ancient Mesoamerica. 9 (2). Cambridge University Press: 183–232. doi:10.1017/S0956536100001954.
{{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter|coauthors=ignored (|author=suggested) (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|author=at position 1 (help); templatestyles stripmarker in|coauthors=at position 1 (help)CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - Veytia, Mariano (2000) [1836]. Donald W. Hemingway and W. David Hemingway (compilation and eds.) (ed.). Ancient America rediscovered: including an account of America's first settlers who left from the biblical tower of Babel at the time of the confusion of tongues. Ronda Cunningham (trans.) (Translation of the first 23 chapters of Book 1 of the Veytia's Historia antigua de Mexico, 1st English ed.). Springville, UT: Bonneville Books. ISBN 1-55517-479-5. OCLC 45203586.
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